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  AI-Dominated Leveraged ETFs Are Rattling Markets A growing share of equity leverage is riding on the same AI names, many of which have seen historic swings. Memory AI Hardware AI Software Wall Street history is littered with products that got too popular for their own good. Quant strategies smothered by crowding . Mortgage bundles that led to a crisis. Bets against volatility that became the main driver of turbulence. Now, leveraged exchange-traded funds look set to join the list. A dramatic expansion in the issuance and use of these products over the past few years has brought the vehicles — which harness derivatives to amplify, reverse, or reverse-and-amplify the performance of an underlying security — to the point when the risks are no longer contained solely to their own investors. That was emphatically demonstrated in South Korea over the past few weeks, after a frenzy of speculation saw billions of dollars poured into leveraged ETFs tracking two chipmakers, SK Hynix Inc. ...
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The renminbi’s hardest mile is only beginning Financial Times Europe11 Aug 2026Alicia García-Her rero Alicia García-Her rero is chief eco nom ist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and senior research fel low at Brue gel The debate about the ren minbi’s global rise usu ally gets the sequen cing wrong. Ittreats inter na tion al isa tion as a single ascent, with reserve-cur rency status at thesum mit. In prac tice there are three sep ar ate climbs of very dif fer ent diffi  culty: trade, bor -row ing and, hard est of all, invest ment. China has made pro gresson the first twoover 15 years. The last — per suad ing for eign ers to hold ren minbi as an invest ment— has only now star ted, and last June’s Lujiazui Forum in Shang hai set the stage forthe way for ward. The ortho dox path runs through the cap ital account: open your mar kets, runexternal defi cits, let non-res id ents accu mu late your cur rency. But China can not andwill not take that route. So it has pushed the ren minbi out ward by ot...
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  Contra la cretinización tecnológica Los móviles y ciertas aplicaciones digitales son un arma de destrucción masiva de las capacidades cognitivas y relacionales, de la salud mental y democrática 5 min. Varias jóvenes consultan sus móviles. XAVIER LORENZO (GETTY) El verano solía ser un tiempo de desconexión, descubrimiento, distancia y diferencia. Ofrecía la lentitud y la profundidad. Ahora, como puede comprobarse en cualquier playa, piscina, tren, bar o verbena, es lo mismo que las demás estaciones: un tiempo de adicción al móvil y a las redes que anidan en él. El verano ahora es conexión, continuidad, cercanía y cacofonía indistinguible. Inflige más velocidad y superficialidad. Las cuatro estaciones de la hipnosis no conocen fronteras. Somos casi todos adictos a estas máquinas diabólicas cuyo hardware y los softwares que las animan han sido diseñados precisamente para eso. Pero abundan los argumentos para temer que los más jóvenes sufran un impacto más grave que quienes hemos ...
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  THE HIDDEN LEVERAGE OF HYPERSCALERS Whenever someone worries about how the hyperactive data centre investments of the AI hyperscalers are becoming increasingly financed by debt, optimists are quick to scoff. They point out that these companies still have core businesses that generate a ton of cash, relatively little debt and strong credit ratings. Even if the data centres don’t produce the expected financial returns, it’s more of an issue for equity investors than lenders. It’s a fair point. Despite the recent bond issuance splurge, hyperscalers have an average net leverage ratio of just 0.5 times, compared to 0.8 times for the technology sector as a whole, and 1.8 times for (non-financial) US companies in general, according to Morgan Stanley. Most eye-catchingly, they have more cash than debt. However . . .  You may have noticed that the hyperscalers have become increasingly inventive in how they raise the money required for a titanic series of data centres being built around t...
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  Immigration Becomes a Global Powder Keg As the modern era of mass migration ebbs, nations should act or risk a backlash. By Listen (5 min) People protest outside the RAF Barnham site in Thetford, England, Aug. 9. Joe Giddens/PA Wire/ZUMA Press Thetford, England, population about 25,500, has been mostly quiet since King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries kneecapped the local economy in 1540. But several nights of violence last week put the Norfolk market town in the news. Crowds angry at plans to house asylum seekers at a nearby Royal Air Force site attacked buildings where migrants were believed to be sheltered. An uneasy peace returned over the weekend, but British authorities worried that the antiforeigner violence could spread. Thetford is only one place where migrants—and locals’ resistance to mass immigration—are making headlines. Images of migrants streaming across the border from Morocco into the Spanish city of Ceuta electrified viewers globally, created headac...
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 NUKE IRAN! Trump Shifts to Economic Pressure, Again, As Iran Won’t Meet His Demands With military attacks and diplomacy not working, the Trump administration is reupping an old strategy with the hope of getting a new result By , and Listen (7 min) Trump, at least for now, is telling aides he prefers not to order more strikes. Kylie Cooper/Reuters Quick Summary Reluctant to return to all-out war, President Trump is turning back to using economic pressure against Iran. Top aides advised Trump that financial punishment at this point in the war could be more effective than military strikes, which have shown limited success. After Iran demanded that the U.S. pay war reparations, Trump countered that Iran should compensate the U.S. This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism. Reluctant to return to all-out war, President Trump is turning back to using economic pressure against Iran. WASHINGTON—Presid...
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